


watchdogs

by localghostgirl



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Crime Fighting, Gen, How Do I Tag, Oneshot, Vigilantism, but not graphic, cursing, hint hint, it's hero, lol sorry jess, mild violence?, oh well, scene of an obvious assault/rape, stay safe kiddos, the h-word, this is hecka short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 02:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15062804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/localghostgirl/pseuds/localghostgirl
Summary: The first time that Luke, Jessica, and Danny kept good on their promise to Matt.





	watchdogs

**Author's Note:**

> I literally just finished The Defenders and I was crying even though I knew that Matt wasn't dead??? Anywho. I literally wrote this piece of crap in half an hour, so please excuse any typos that I may have made.
> 
> EDIT: 3•16•19- I fixed some glaring typos lol.

"He said, 'Protect my city.'"

Jessica nodded her head. She knew that Matt had not planned on coming out of there alive, but Danny's words still hit her like a sucker punch to the gut. That was it. It was over. The Hand was gone now, for good. 

As much as Jessica, who had become the closest to Matt out the rest of the sort of short lived vigilante group team thingy, knew that there was absolutely no convincing Matt to leave with them, a part of her wanted to scream and yell and punch some stuff into oblivion. 

Instead, she bought some whiskey. 

•••

It didn't take long at all for New York to go back to normal. The firefighters and city volunteers among others were still digging through the rubble that was Midland Circle. The debris that littered the street at one point was cleaned up the day after Midland went down. The mayor had let out an official statement that the tremors were the fault of Midland's architectural errors and its collapse evened out and stabilized the city ground. 

Frankly, everyone believed him. What reason did they have not to? It's not like the reasoning wasn't solid. 

Danny, Matt, Luke and Jessica as well as Colleen and Claire were clean. Their names tied back to nothing concerning the Midland Circle crisis and they were all more than happy with that. Their names were no more well known than before all this happened. 

Matt Murdock was missed by few. Others that didn't know about his "other life" -as Matt's friends had called it- had no reason to even think about his abrupt and suspicious disappearance. To outsiders, it was like he hadn't even existed. 

But that didn't mean that Hell's Kitchen (as well as some other New York cities) didn't notice his absence. Daredevil was suddenly off the grid. Gone. Vanished into thin air. 

Crime rates rose after a few hesitant weeks, criminals being scared that any moment the Devil himself would come back and bite them harder than ever. They tossed looks over their shoulders at any and every rustle of tree branches or out-of-place sounding noises. 

But they eventually figured out that the Devil was gone and he was probably gone for good, as from the looks of it. 

And they couldn't have been happier. 

•••

The first of the three Defenders to keep good on Matt's request was Luke. Harlem was as good as ever and with the destruction of the Hand, crime rates went down in Harlem due to Luke paying a nice ol' visit to anyone that so much as rumored to be dealing or robbing. 

The same couldn't have been said about Hell's Kitchen. 

So Luke ventured his way over and couldn't help but feel like maybe he should've done this sooner rather than later. The crime in Hell's Kitchen was so high that the first street Luke walked down he stopped a mugger and a potential break-in. 

The fifth street he went down, however, was where it was all at. He walked into an abandoned warehouse and right into a ring of boys surrounding a table, their hoods up and their backs to Luke. 

"If Zach trips the system for at least six or seven minutes, I'll be able to get in and get out with more money than our last hit. Dante, if you come with me, we'll be able to make double." A kid in a red jacket said. 

"Yeah, man, I'm in as long as there's no way we get caught." Another boy- maybe Dante- said. 

"Really?" Luke started, deciding to make himself known. "A nighttime bank robbery?"

"Shit!" One of them yelled. All four of them pulled out a hand gun and pointed them at Luke. "Who are you?"

"Yeah, those aren't going to work on me." Luke banged a fist to his chest and took steady steps forward. He noticed the hand of one shake. "I've already called the cops. Put down the guns. No one needs to die, and I assure you, if the cops come running in here and see the four of you armed, they aren't going to wait for nothing." 

"Man, that's Luke Cage right there!" The fourth kid, the one with the shanking hand, turned to address Luke. "What the hell are you doing in Hell's Kitchen? I thought Harlem was your place." 

"I'm here for a friend. I think you know him? Daredevil?" Sirens could be heard getting closer and the flashing lights could be seen out of broken windows. "Now put the guns down." 

They did. 

•••

Jessica was next. She figured after seeing many articles speculating as to why Luke Cage was now semi-regularly fighting crime in Hell's Kitchen(and where was Daredevil?) she should get up off her lazy ass and help out. She did, after all, live here. And as much as she said she hated the h-word, she planned on doing right by Matt's dying request. 

So that night she held out on the liquor, only having two and a half shots, and hit the streets looking for crime to fight, or whatever the hell it was Matt did during his Daredevil-ing time. 

She figured patrolling the area to begin with didn't sound so bad. 

Now, Jessica knew that Hell's Kitchen had a lot of crime. But she didn't know that it had this much crime. In her first forty-five minutes of walking around, she stopped a car theft, attempted child abduction, and even some kids picking on some poor haggard looking dog that they found in an alley. In an hour, she had knocked out about eight people. She left them all for the police after she was done teaching them a lesson. 

She only went back home when Trish called her to ask her where she was and if she had forgotten about their dinner plans again. She told her that she was just on a walk. She really didn't need Trish thinking that Jessica was about to become some goddamned superhero or some shit. 

•••

Even though Matt had been the one to pull Danny aside and ask him and the others to look after his beloved city, Danny was the last to defend it. It was something that he wasn't very proud of. (Especially when even Jessica Jones herself started hero-ing around. That's when Danny knew that he had pushed it off for long enough.) 

So Danny stood on roof tops and surveilled the city that Matt had loved so much. He didn't hesitate to jump off the roof and into a dumpster at the first sight of trouble. 

He hit the ground running after bailing out of the trash can and went straight towards where the suspected crime was happening. 

It was late and chilly outside, just the beginning of October. Street lights lit up the dark alley way and Danny roughly shoved a man off of a drunk girl who couldn't have been more than twenty years old. She tried to get out of the alley, but in her drunken state of being, she turned her ankle in her heels and crashed to the cold asphalt. She sobbed hard. 

"What were you going to do to her? Huh?"  
Danny growled. "Answer me!" The man's belt was unbuckled and his pants were undone. He shook, obviously scared, and tried to stutter out an excuse before Danny punched him in the jaw. He hit the ground, unconscious. 

Danny turned towards the girl that was still on the ground. She was now trying her best to get back up and get away fast. He approached her slowly and with his hands raised. "I'm here to help," he said as softly as he could. She whimpered nodded her head. He helped her to her feet. She stopped crying and started thanking him profusely in a broken kind of voice that made Danny want to pummel the guy some more. He didn't. Instead, they called the police and he went to the hospital with the girl. 

•••

The criminals that dwelled Hell's Kitchen might've been scared shitless of Daredevil, but they soon realized that he was gone now and in his place were three new vigilantes that went around fighting crime without scary ass masks or a deep, raspy voice. But the criminals knew to fear these new watchdogs just the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you guys for reading!!! Leave a comment on anything I could've done better, maybe? It's always appreciated.


End file.
